Hi Roy,
I have never tried to plan a garden by computer before. I have been vedgetable gardening in an amatuerish fashion for 20 years. I have a few days a leisure ahead of me because of a badly broken hip. I can spend some time each day trying some stuff out in your program.

I looked for some sort of tutoring info or clear information, but have failed to find any. I know this is a beta, but I need some direction. I would like to try a container garden 3ft by 24 ft using Mel Bartholomew's gardening advice. his book will arrive in a few days. Meanwhile, I can certainly take your software out fror a testdrive.

How would you suggest I begin?

Last edited by Phillip1697 on Fri Jan 27, 2006 9:36 am; edited 1 time in total

Another thought on Square ft style garden planning. The names will have to fit differently, and it might be better if the names would not move separately form the image unless unlinked manually. I accidently grabbed a couple of names out of place while trying to move vedgetables.

If a fellow had the option to choose square ft or "container" planning it would be nice if all the vedgetables defaulted into single mode rather than rows.

First and foremost take care of that hip. You will need that hip in good shape when things start to thaw out. A lot of bending to look under the leaves for new cucumbers.

I have read a bit about Mel Bartholomew's Square-foot gardening and use bits and pieces of his suggestions. I have thought about how it pertains to plangarden and I always thought I would wait until someday someone asked about it. Well someday is now. But this way I can get your input as a practicing square-foot gardener.

One idea that I had would be an option in the garden layout that would turn on a one foot grid. This would put black lines in a grid pattern at one foot intervals. Let me know if this would be helpful. The drawing engine that would do this would be pretty easy, but of course is going to pick the top left corner and measure out the grid from there.

For snapping to grids I could make it adjustable and snap to grids every 6 inches which I think would give a nice enough drop feature, besides you would want to drop at the 1/2 foot marks inside a one foot grid. Currently I already have snap to grid working, but it works on snapping to 3 pixels. So I just need to make the grid adjustable to inches rather than feet.

Using everything as a plant rather then the default of the vegetable as assigned by me is a good one, I just need to find where I am going to put this option to make it easy to use.

Plant names move with the main plant. So when you move the plant the name moves with it. Then to give you a fine level of control where the name goes you can move the name independantly. If you move the plant again the name will move to track the plant. One thing I have thought of is an option to LOCK the plant name so plant names couldn't be moved. This would be a global feature that could be turned on and off.

One suggestion since the software works based on the computer screen a 3 x 24 foot garden with be very long and skinny and you may not like the way it scales. You may want to create to 3 x 12 foot garden and have one be the north and the other be the south or west and west as the case may be. I do this will a long stretch of garden that runs along a fence.

As far as height goes, I have thought I would first add area that would allow you to see from the top how much space to leave around a garlic versus a cucumber or zucchini. Height would make more sense if I added a 3-d walk through of the garden so you could see if your tomatoes would possibly cast too much shade on your carrots or maybe shelter some lettuce. Yes I have an idea to make a cheap 3-d version maybe next year, but it takes a lot of modeling and time and it wouldn't look REAL, it woud only be as refrence.

Sorry about not having a tutorial yet. The information on the website that gives you a tour of the software is all I have now. Soon I will be making a flash movie that will allow me to actually show how the software is used. Until then post any questions comment or troubles that you have with the software. It is hard to work on the manual when the features or screen shots change every few weeks.

Thanks for the quick response. When I suggested a snap to grid, I was being too specific. A simple grid that could be turned off and on would suffice. Full cad/cam capabilities would be overkill.

Row planting has recommended spacing and row widths. Square foot planting also has these types of recommendations, but completely different. For myself, the ability to look at each square foot closely would be nice. I'd also like to be able to punch in a number and subdivide the one foot square so that it is a one plant square, 2, 3 etc. So square one might have 4 units for corn, square 2 has just one for a Zuchinni, but square 3 might accomodate 9 carrots.

Thanks for the tip on dividing the garden. I am choosing to put in a container along the south side of my house. It gets good sun and won't interfere with play areas.

I figured out the plant names after I emailed the first time. Kinda neat really.

As far as height is concerned, I was not thinking about graphics. Your post about future collaboration with seed companies tells a story about data input. Different varietals vary in characteristics and it would be fruitless to try to enter all pertinent info. I get that. But, for me to use this as a planner in truth, I need the kind of info commonly found on the back of seed packets. Even if it is quite generic. So, height, germination dates, harvest dates etc.

My book arrived in the mail, I am reading it avidly. I will send you my thoughts after i have read it and have begun actively planning my garden.

One thing that occurred to me right away is that determining when to plant, when to seed indoors, when to do anything is daunting at first. Most people just throw everything in Memorial day weekend around here. That costs us the whole spring growing season. Perhaps a calndar function that offers advice by zone. Could be very generic advice or specific to each persons plan. How's that for a ton of work for you?

I'm going to second the calandar idea. It would be nice if it's own tab. I'm also a new gardener and have been very overwhelmed about when to do things. Mother Earth News Jan issue had a neat little chart that helped me out some with when to start seeds. It had you find your average last frost. Told you how many weeks before or after that date a general type of veggie needed to go in the ground and how many weeks before that you should start them indoors. I went crazy by the end counting weeks back and forth on a calendar and thought it would be neat to have one that was computerized.

It was also limited as to what plants they had info about. Some that it didn't list I found out on my own didn't do well starting indoor and should have been planted outside, but I didn't really know when. I got lots of my seeds from a local seed exchange and most from a small family business, but my seed packets didn't have all the info I needed as to when to start, plant, spacing, etc.

Another thing I've been hearing lots of discussion about lately, but I'm not ready to go there yet, is planting by the signs as in the Farmers Almanac. But it seems there is a lot of interest in this among many gardeners, so it might be something to consider down the road.

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